Some Good Ways to Begin an Essay
A lack of specific examples of good introductory tactics in most writing
handbooks points to a truth about essay introductions: anything formulaic
will soon grow stale and uninteresting. Your introduction needs to be
fitted to your specific topic and your approach to it. This is likely
one of the reasons experienced writers leave off writing an introduction
until they have completed a first draft.
Nonetheless, having avoided cliché, wide-funnelling opening tactics,
consider using one the following six good strategies for beginning an
essay:
- Begin with a Lively or Provocative
Quotation
"Okay, the
arm is out for the first time . . . working great. It's a remarkable
flying machine and it's doing exactly as we hoped and expected."
With this historic statement, the shuttle Canadarm began a long service
as the first-ever robotic manipulator system designed for specific
use in the harsh environment of space. Having demonstrated its reliability,
usefulness, and versatility through 63 flawless missions to date,
the robotic manipulator arm with the Canada word mark prominently
displayed on its upper arm boom is truly celebrated as one of Canada's
crowning technological achievements in space . . . Canadian
Space Agency website
www.space.gc.ca/asc/eng/exploration/canadarm/default.asp
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Academic essays often begin with a quotation from a
historical figure, some leading authority, or an important document.
The quotation usually expresses a central idea or truth that the essay
builds upon. Starting with a quotation is a useful strategy for both
writer and reader since it brings the essay swiftly to its big idea.
Sometimes a writer will find a particularly pertinent quotation while
researching a topic and reserve it for the opening paragraph—a
further reason to defer writing that introduction until the end of
the essay process. An opening quotation to an essay has to be significant
enough to the topic at hand, however, to merit its place of prominence.
Here to illustrate is the opening paragraph from a piece of technical
writing posted on the website for the Canadian Space Agency.
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- Begin by Asking Questions
What did you
eat for breakfast? For lunch, for last night's supper, as an afternoon
snack? What did you eat, and why? We think we choose food consciously,
deliberately, rationally. We think about calories, price, time, convenience,
cholesterol and fat and protein and other people's opinions, even
as we mull over our desire. But what we choose to eat, even what we
want to eat, is dictated by forces far beyond our reach, by tiny tides
we do not see. Whether we want to believe it or not, we eat what we
eat for a thousand reasons. We eat to settle our nerves, in joy and
despair, in boredom and lust. We comfort ourselves, make ritual, find
delight. What we choose makes us naughty or good. Food fills many
empty spaces. It can be symbolic, mythic, even archetypal—and
nothing special. How we feel about food is how we feel about our own
lives, and so I am concerned with the central human experience of
food—the intimate, universal, common
experience laced with personal meaning and shared with every stranger.
(Sally Tisdale, The Best Thing I Ever Tasted: The Secret of
Food. New York: Riverhead Books, 2000.) |
Beginning with a few brief questions can be an effective essay opener
if you are not writing an expressly argumentative essay—which
demands that you offer answers and solutions rather than pose questions.
Sometimes questions are asked merely to pique the reader's curiosity
and interest, as in the first two questions in the example to your
left. But more often, the writer poses a question or series of questions
that the writing will go on to answer, as in the third question here.
In her book The Best Thing I Ever Tasted: The Secret of Food,
Sally Tisdale explores food consumption habits in North America.
The paragraph at left begins the main section in the book's opening
chapter. |
- Begin with a Simple, Direct Statement
We are living
in the age of the great "So what?" Millions of ordinary
people in North American society would, if they were candid, admit
that these two words could one day form a fitting epitaph on their
grave. The phrase hangs unspoken in the air in the buses, subway trains,
and cars as they head home at day's end. It hovers in the houses of
the rich and famous as age creeps on and the glittering toys no longer
amuse.
(Tom Harpur, God Help Us. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart,
1992.) |
In a short essay, a good opening tactic is to come right to your
point. Present your thesis argument or big idea in the first sentence
of paragraph one. No general introductory comments; no throat-clearing.
Just make your point up front, and get on with elaborating and supporting
your claim. A short essay for a university course, a brief opinion
piece for a journal or newspaper, any piece of writing in which you
must take a position on a matter—these are fit occasions to start
with a simple, direct statement. Note how this strategy works in the
example below from a piece by popular religion writer and newspaper
columnist Tom Harpur. |
- Begin with an Analogy or Brief Illustration
Our
skin is a kind of space suit in which we maneuver through an atmosphere
of harsh gases, cosmic rays, radiation from the sun, and obstacles
of all sorts. Years ago, I read about a boy who had to live in a bubble
(designed by NASA) because of the weakness of his immune system and
his susceptibility to disease. We are all that boy. The bubble is
our skin. But the skin is also alive, breathing and excreting, shielding
us from harmful rays and microbial attack, metabolizing vitamin D,
insulating us from heat and cold, repairing itself when necessary,
regulating blood flow, acting as a frame for our sense of touch, aiding
us in sexual attraction, defining our individuality, holding all the
thick red jams and jellies inside us where they belong.
(Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses. New
York: Vintage, 1990.) |
Analogy is a form of comparison that presents or illustrates
an unfamiliar thing or idea through an image or procedure the reader
is likely familiar with. Analogies can help to clarify and explain
an object or abstract notion. Beginning an essay with an analogy
is an especially good way to engage the reader if your topic is
a concept or idea that might be foreign to your reader. Essays in
philosophy and science may be fitted to this kind of beginning.
A writer needs to use analogies cautiously, however, since they
are always limited in their points of comparison. For example, Ackerman's
analogy at left is true to the extent that like the astronaut in
a space suit, we live inside the protective shielding of our skin.
But, unlike the suited-up astronaut, we cannot climb out of our
skin once a given mission is completed. |
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When Norman
Bethune left Canada for China in 1938, he could not have gone further
in time and space; for he did not travel to the China of Shanghai,
or Peiping, or even Nanjing, but to the north-west, where little had
changed in hundreds or even thousands of years. There, almost invisible
to Europe and North America, pitched battles were being fought between
armies of hundreds of thousands of troops as the communist Chinese
and the Japanese Empire made war against each other. Bethune had already
gained fame helping to organize blood transfusion units in Spain,
and his ideological credentials were certainly in order, but the medical
challenge that faced him as he made his way across China to join the
8th Route Army was immense. A formation of 200,000, with
2500 in hospital at any given time, it had available only five doctors
and 50 apprentices. The Canadian had his work cut out for him.
(Bill Rawling, "To the Sound of the Guns: Canadians and Combat
Surgery, 1938-1953." Canadian Military History, 6.1
(Spring) 1997: 57-68.) |
Good essay writers often employ the skills of the storyteller to
make their work inviting to the reader. Even in academic writing,
starting an essay with a story or short anecdote may be a winsome
and acceptable way to begin, depending on your topic. If you are writing
an essay in a discipline where narrative is a preferred mode of discourse,
where your topic deals with some aspect of history or social behavior,
for example, starting with a story is an appropriate and engaging
strategy. The following opening paragraph is the first part of an
extended story that introduces a ten-page article examining Canadian
innovations in the development of combat surgery practices. |
- Begin by Describing a Scene or Place
Baghdad
is rich in monuments to the dead of war. They are, excepting the Leader's
many palaces, by far the most impressive pieces of architecture in
the city. The most peculiar one is The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,
a pavilion of polished dark-red granite over which hangs a giant upside-down
metal clamshell hundreds of feet in diameter. A visitor walks up a
long, broad ramp of gray stone that leads, as it were, into the belly
of the clam. To one side is a smallish ziggurat, modeled on the ancient
Tower of Amara, but in fact as trashily modern as a Burger King, with
bright red, green, and black tiles crawling up and down its sides.
A square hole in the granite under the center of the clam leads to
a staircase, which descends two stories to debouch into a round windowless
room.
(Michael Kelly, Martyrs' Day: Chronicle of a Small War).
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A descriptive opening can set the scene for the substance in the
essay that follows. It's akin to telling a story since it engages
the reader's imagination and thereby makes the writing immediate and
forceful. This kind of opening may suit an essay for history, military
studies, or geography. The paragraph at left is the work of the late
Michael Kelly, a celebrated journalist killed on assignment in Iraq
in April 2003. His compassionate, extraordinarily detailed, and informed
dispatches on the earlier Gulf War were later expanded and collected
into an award-winning book, which begins with this paragraph. |
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